


Call Me In

by tb_ll57



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Episode Tag, Gap Filler, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 20:59:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1278610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>On another day, House might have laughed. Or he might have made a face and ignored that. On a really stellar day he might even have engaged that, because it was a– faintly– interesting thing to say. But it was this day, and it had been a long day, and Chase at the end of any day left a bitter aftertaste.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call Me In

‘Come over tonight,’ House said.

Chase paused at the door, his fingers hesitating on the handle. ‘It’s been a while,’ he replied eventually.

‘Is that a “no”?’

Chase’s eyes dropped to the floor, and then he pushed the door open. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘How’s half-seven?’

 

**

 

Chase scribbled a note in the margins of his chart. ‘How’d the rape case end?’ he asked, glancing up as House passed him.

House tested his thumb against the coffee carafe. It wasn’t stone cold, so he poured a cup, and emptied a sugar packet into it. ‘Surprisingly, you were right,’ he said. ‘I should have left her asleep.’

Chase was capping his pen as House faced him. He propped it between his front teeth. ‘I know.’

‘You gonna make me ask you ‘why’, too?’

‘You don’t care why.’

‘I know,’ House mimicked. He sipped the coffee, lukewarm and faintly nauseating. ‘Oh, what the hell,’ he added. ‘Why?’

Chase’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead. ‘People violate each other the time,’ he said, and had the nerve to sound faintly surprised. ‘We blunder through life violating each other. Accidentally, deliberately. Without ever knowing.’ He bit down on the pen, perfect teeth leaving marks in the plastic. ‘There is no “why”. There’s just a “next”.’

On another day, House might have laughed. Or he might have made a face and ignored that. On a really stellar day he might even have engaged that, because it was a– faintly– interesting thing to say. But it was this day, and it had been a long day, and Chase at the end of any day left a bitter aftertaste. He poured the coffee down the sink.

‘And you think that drifting through life refusing to let anyone know the “real” you is the best way to avoid _penetration?_ ’

Chase’s head tilted in a way that suggested sarcasm. ‘You can’t avoid it,’ he answered evenly. ‘I don’t think I do.’

‘Then what’s with the super-secret Double-Oh Seven routine?’

Chase took the pen from his mouth, but only to switch which end he was chewing. He rose, stacked his charts, pushed in his chair. ‘Coping,’ he said.

‘Chase.’

His leg hurt. His leg hurt, and would always hurt; there was a girl in the Clinic who’d go home and go to sleep and wake up in the morning no better and no worse for anything House had done to her; there was Cuddy thinking he’d just man up if she threw the world at him long enough, and Wilson who couldn’t man up to demand burnt toast if it would save his life. A man who was nothing better than a kid standing in front of him who was drifting through life because no-one had ever taught him anything better, and it wasn’t going to be House, either.

‘What?’ Chase asked him. He had his hand on the door handle.

‘Do you still blame me for not telling you that your father was going to die?’

Chase blinked once. ‘No.’

House raised his own eyebrows. ‘You don’t think I– what– you don’t think I owe you?’

‘No.’

‘Chase,’ he said again.

Chase smiled. Just a little. ‘What, House?’

It had been a long day. There were always going to be long days, but if he was going to be stuck in a room with someone, then statistically it couldn’t always suck so bad.

‘Come over tonight,’ he said.

Chase’s fingers went tight on the handle, on the charts clutched at his side. ‘It’s been a while,’ he said eventually. Unsaid, in the miles of silence on either side of that, _Cameron, Vogler, Rowan, Kayla, God. Help me._

‘Yeah.’ House turned his back, hooked his cane over the edge of the sink, and opened the cupboard for the coffee grounds. There was just enough left in the tin to make a new pot. ‘That a problem?’ he asked the powder, digging up a scoop of it.

‘... no.’

‘Grow a spine,’ House snapped, flinging the grounds into the wet filter over the carafe. ‘It’s been two years and you don’t even squeak when I command you to come over and fuck me? No-one is that compliant, Chase, no-one is that _needy_ that you have to bend over to make it all better. It _doesn’t mean anything._ ’

He couldn’t even hear Chase breathing after that. But the door didn’t close, either, no footsteps walked away.

‘There’s no grand reason I want you tonight and not any other night between then and now,’ he said. He wrenched the whole coffee machine into the sink to fill it with water, smacked the plug into the wall and turned it on. ‘Tonight won’t be any different than any other time I called you over. I won’t heal you, and you sure as hell won’t heal me. I’m not going to suddenly want to date you, I’m not going to give more of a damn about you because I slept with you.’

‘I know,’ Chase said. His voice was low and tight.

‘You want me to respect you? You want me to approve of you? You want me to validate you?’ He faced the younger man. ‘I won’t. Ever. You’re going to finish your fellowship and walk out of this hospital and on to whatever unimportant life you bumble into, and nothing about me is going to be changed because you were here.’

‘I know, House.’

He grabbed his cane and hobbled to the table, leaving just enough room between them that Chase didn’t quite move away. ‘You’re one of the least interesting people I’ve ever met. Nothing about you is mysterious, nothing about you is unanswered or unfinished. You’re not even curious about your own life. You’re not here to solve the puzzle, you’re not here cure the sick, you’re not even here to advance your career. You’re just idling through life, bouncing off people who actually know how to drive. That rape victim didn’t know a damn thing, had never encountered a single difficult or challenging thought in her life until this week, and she still knew how to fight for something. You’ve never fought for a damn thing.’

He ran out of steam. He ran out of anger. His hand was sore from gripping the cane so hard. He exhaled.

Chase swallowed, and opened the door again. ‘There’s no “why”, House,’ he said briefly, and left.

 

**

 

The doorbell rang at half-seven.

House didn’t answer it, and eventually, it stopped.

 

**

 

Chase knocked at half-seven, and let himself in when the knob turned freely.

House sat on the couch, speeding through the contents of his TiVo. ‘Honest to Pete, is there nothing I can say to make you show a little self-preservation?’

Chase joined him silently. He’d changed from work, which meant he’d gone to his own home first, which, House hoped, meant he’d at least considered not venturing out again. He looked older out of his ironed shirts and ties, as if there were a human hiding under the costumes after all.

‘What are we watching?’ Chase asked.

Soap TV. Scrubs. Ellen. Further screw-ups in Iraq. ‘Nothing.’

Chase nodded, in the periphery of his vision. ‘You eat yet?’

‘There’s some Thai in the kitchen if you’re hungry.’ House settled on Montel Williams, and propped the clicker on his knee. The audience applauded as the host emerged on stage. ‘I might, in a small way, have exaggerated your level of uninterestingness.’ The carefully rehearsed not-apology sounded exactly like a carefully rehearsed not-apology, and House was moderately pleased with it. Montel began introducing the guests, accompanied by a video montage and soft piano music. ‘It’s just that your actually interesting moments are so sporadic.’

Chase didn’t sigh, but it seemed like he did. ‘House,’ he said. ‘You don’t owe me anything.’ He took the clicker from House, and set the television on mute. ‘Are you comfortable?’

‘Yeah.’ House shifted anyway, slouching down into the cushion crack he sat on. Chase slid onto his knees on the floor, just like that, and unzipped House’s jeans. He tugged, and House pushed, and they got his pants down enough for the job, and Chase took a plain, cheap condom from his pocket and rolled it over House. ‘Seriously?’ House demanded.

‘You get tested after the last hooker you had here?’

‘Feel free to make a close examination while you’re down there, Doctor.’

It was worth the argument just for the look on Chase’s face. House had always been content to let the world imagine the worst about him, but Chase vacillated between charmingly adult scepticism and annoyingly childish credulity with complete unpredictability.

Except that it was the child who was with him tonight, not the man, and it wasn’t what House wanted, much less what he needed to settle the echoes of a day that wouldn’t end. Chase wrapped a clumsy hand around the base of his prick, and awkwardly bent his head. House closed his eyes. The slick insides of the condom rubbed distractingly as Chase bobbed down and up. The suction was uneven, and he wanted a little more attention to the rest of his body. Chase didn’t touch him. He’d had hookers less concerned with personal boundaries, so, yes, probably he should have called for one of them, not a little boy who–

Chase let him go and sat back on his heels. His lips looked swollen already. ‘Are you all right? Would it be better if we got rid of the rubber?’ he murmured. His eyebrows came together. ‘How much Vicodin have you had?’

House dropped his head to the back of the couch. ‘One too many, apparently.’ He gestured vaguely at his lap. ‘Sorry.’

Chase rose and walked away from him. House pulled the condom off, and snapped it across the room. It fell behind a floor lamp. He supposed he would have to act embarrassed, or something, whenever Chase got back; impotence was so unmanly. Or not. It wasn’t as if Chase had high standards for his dates.

He saw the hand before the rest of Chase emerged into view. Chase held out a steaming mug. House sniffed at it, held up to his face. ‘What is this?’

‘Tea,’ Chase said.

‘I don’t have any tea.’

‘Yes, you do. I left it here two years ago.’

House took the mug, and their fingers actually occupied the same space for a few moments before Chase let go. ‘You’re not going to flush me out in time for us to do anything.’

Chase leant over the back of the couch, jerkily. He kissed House voluntarily for the first time in their entire relationship. It was dry-mouthed and tentative, or maybe unhappy. It lasted too long, and Chase’s eyes were open– so were House’s, for that matter– wide and sliding away from meeting his. When it ended, Chase stood up straight, his hands flat on the couch, and his perfect hair went flopping down in his face like a gauzy yellow curtain.

‘You taste like latex,’ House said.

‘For once,’ Chase retorted, ‘shut up.’

 

**

 

Chase came over at half-seven, and at eight took House by the elbow and led him back to the bedroom.

‘She ever tell you why she wanted you to treat her?’ he asked House.

House wove a knot in the string of Chase’s hood. ‘She said I had a look to me.’

‘You have a lot of looks to you.’

‘It’s horse shit. I was there. I guessed what had happened to her, and she knew I guessed. It was complete and categorical coincidence.’ Chase pulled a pillow under his head. ‘What’d you do today?’

That wrung a smile up from somewhere. ‘One of my premies in NICU died. She never stabilised.’ He fingered his hair back from his face. ‘Foreman went home early with his girlfriend. Cameron had a homeless man with stage-four lung cancer. He died, too.’

‘Why didn’t you have the lung-cancer guy?’ House dropped the string. ‘Why didn’t Wilson have him, for that matter?’

‘She tried to dump him off on me. Then my baby went into respiratory arrest, and I couldn’t take him. She should have passed him off to ICU.’

‘I’ll ask her about it. What happened to cockroach man?’

‘He went back to the Clinic. He wasn’t there when I checked later, so they must have taken care of him.’

That was all the gossip they could be expected to mutually share an interest in. Chase was staring up at the ceiling. House looked up, too, but the ceiling hadn’t changed noticeably since the last time he’d seen it.

‘You look like you’re hurting, too,’ Chase said.

House glanced sharply. Chase’s face was blank, but that didn’t mean anything.

‘I bet she said that.’

‘Yes.’ House reached for the pillow under Chase and ripped it away. ‘You going to tell me who violated you?’

‘It’s not your business. I didn’t choose you. I’m not going to choose you.’

Maybe it made him a bad person, but House was relieved.

 

**

 

Chase kissed him. House had kissed him before, twice to make a point, three times because he forgot or didn’t care that Chase didn’t like it, and once before he’d known Chase had hang-ups. Chase kissed him, now, uneasily, jittery with the effort. He was as bad at that as he was at blow jobs, and went about them both the same way, until House muttered at him to stop and concentrate on what he knew how to do.

They found a way to make it almost work, House propped on his side and Chase curled with one leg over House’s hip. It wasn’t quite sex and it wasn’t quite mutual, but there was no point sending him home early.

House snapped the rubber glove around his wrist. ‘This must be what it feels like to be a proctologist,’ he said.

Chase had wiry gold hairs all over his legs, and they caught at the glove as he rubbed Chase’s thigh. Chase made a noise to indicate pain or irritation, maybe, and House opened the lube.

‘You better not come on my sheets,’ he added, and pushed two fingers into Chase.

It took a long time, not all of it good. Chase returned the favour with a handjob that never got him fully hard, and he couldn’t ever get a reliable angle on Chase’s prostate. He added another finger, tried a fourth but found it too awkward, and Chase must not have been able to figure out a way to get off without actually touching House, because he finally deigned to rest his head against House’s shoulder. There was a little squirming, sometimes, and sometimes Chase breathed hard through his nose, but never enough. ‘Fuck,’ House said, and Chase squeezed him too softly. ‘Masturbate, already.’ Chase obeyed him, Chase always obeyed him, jerking himself in a way that looked painful, his breath damp and hitched into House’s chest. He squirmed, squirmed all over as if he really were spineless, to catch them both in his palm. House let him, rolled onto him to hold him down.

Chase came without a sound, his hair flung all over the pillow, boneless. House leant over him until the crinkles around his eyes relaxed.

‘What would you have done, if she’d been your patient?’

Chase sighed. For real, out loud, expressing identifiable emotion.

‘I’m tired, House.’

‘What would you have done? What would you have told her?’ He dropped the glove to his carpet, and traced Chase’s collarbone at the neck of his tee shirt. ‘You believe in God. You believe in trials and tests. Would you have told her it means something? That surviving will make her a better person, a stronger Christian? I want to know what the hell you’d say to her, if she were your patient.’

‘She wasn’t.’

‘Damn it, Chase.’

Chase opened his eyes. House stopped moving his finger, and pressed his thumb to Chase’s throat.

‘Come over again tomorrow,’ he said.


End file.
